Thursday, July 28, 2005

The controversy over animated, literally, sex scenes found in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas reached the US Capitol earlier this week. Bunch of politicians figured a game that features prostitution, graphic violence, car jackings and other violent crime can't have sexually suggestive contents in it, even if hidden from the retail version and only to be uncovered by modding the game with 3rd party software.

Hillary Clinton opened her presidential campaign with a media blitz suggesting this game alone is cause for all harm ever done to the youth of America. It turns out she was hoodwinkled into doing this by ambulance chaser extraordinaire, Mr. Jack "Thumper" Thompson. Mr. Thompson has made a career of exploiting high profile incidents like the Columbine shootings to extort money from innocent 3rd parties, like the video gaming industry.

Turns out Thumper is not the only lawyer trying to profit from this.

An 85-year-old grandma, Florence Cohen, is suing Rockstar Games, the maker of GTA: San Andreas, and their parent company Take-Two Interactive, because these awful companies put PORN in the game she bought for her grandson.

There's just one big issue with this lawsuit. Her throroughly traumatized grandson is 14. At the time she bought this nice game for her nice grandson GTA: San Andreas was an M-rated game, which means it's not suitable for people under 17. She bought it regardless. She is now claiming she was somehow deceived. If I was the lawyer for Rockstar Games, I'd offer to settle for $1.

The sanest opinion regarding all the media generated controversy on the issue was written by Steven Johnson, author of a book "Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter". He's mockingly encouraging Hillary Clinton to devote her energy on a much more popular game that "instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.". That game is, of course, high school football.